Things can go sour quickly in the NBA, and we all know who pays the price when things go south, right?
The head coach is almost always the one who takes the fall, and the coaching hot seat now has two warm bodies sitting atop it — Jacque Vaughn of the Orlando Magic and Brian Shaw of the Denver Nuggets.
The longest losing streak in the NBA, 9 games, now belongs to the Orlando Magic, who seemed to be heading in the right direction just a couple short weeks ago with back-to-back quality victories over the Houston Rockets and Chicago Bulls. Since then? They’ve been an abomination, failing to come within seven points of each of their last nine opponents. Vaughn has made questionable rotation decisions, such as bringing Tobias Harris off the bench when he returned from an ankle injury, and using Devyn Marble as a starter for five consecutive games before the team decided Marble was best suited to playing in the D-League.
Yahoo Sports reported last week that Vaughn should expect to be fired,. and there have been no votes of confidence or any other types of statements of support from Orlando’s ownership or front office. It would not surprise me at all if Vaughn is shown the door following Orlando’s game at San Antonio on Wednesday night. One thing the Magic will need to find in a replacement is someone who can develop a strong working relationship with Tobias Harris, who will be a restricted free agent at the end of the season and is a target of both the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers.
Things have taken a drastic turn for the worse in Denver, too, where the Nuggets were just two games below .500 in mid-January before going into a freefall, which most recently included a mere 69-point output against Memphis and a home loss to OCharlotte in which the Denver fans actually cheered the exploits of Hornets center Cozy Zeller as he went off for 21 points. “You can just tell his spirit is getting lower and lower,” point guard Ty Lawson told the Denver Post. “I think he’s getting fed up.”
“Our current state is not acceptable and our fans deserve better,” owner Josh Kroenke told the Post’s Benji Hochman. Not exactly a vote of confidence, eh?
Will Shaw make it to the All-Star break? And who might replace him … or Vaughn, for that matter.
Those answers provided in this interview with CineSport’s Noah Coslov.
Chris Sheridan is publisher and editor-in-chief of SheridanHoops.com. Follow him on Twitter.